I Am a Stalker

There was a time when Netflix made and released powerful documentaries. "I am a stalker" is more evidence that the streaming giant is more concerned with quality than quality. I attempted to watch this, but after 15 minutes it was apparent that my high school media production class could do this. Essentially it was point and shoot at two subjects while they told their stories. No context was provided. It was horrible. Sadly this is the new Netflix documentary.make as many cheap documentaries as you can and force feed them to your audience.

The days of "How to Make a Murderer" and "The Tiger King" are gone.

Netflix is capable of so much more than this show. They're obviously knocking out content as fast as they can rather than focusing on quality. Each episode sticks to the same formula.

They have a different stalking 'expert' who gives very limited insight into the stalker. It would have been better to have the same Criminal Psychologist in each episode - someone who is a renowned expert in stalking case, not these random people.

It's the usual story of Netflix taking events that happened in some cases 20 years ago and trying to spin them into an episode. Little to no crime scene footage with just a bunch of reenactments, or retired police going to look longingly at a crime scene.

Not trying to diminish the seriousness of these stalking cases in any way, but Netflix could have done so much more to really get into each case.

This could have been a great analysis of the types of stalking behaviours, but instead it was a superficial, almost reality tv kind of offering where we see stalkers and those being stalked remembering their experiences (valid, of course). Why the need to stretch it into 8 episodes - I cannot fathom, when it could have easily been condensed into a documentary film or a miniseries with much more professional insight into what actually happens in these disturbing situations. Was hoping to learn something new from this, but ended up just watching iterations of the same thing without any in depth analysis of the phenomenon of stalking.

It's not the glossy true crime documentary we've grown to expect from Netflix, but the simplicity of it allows us to appreciate how truly delusional stalkers are and pay close attention to what they say and how they say it. If you pay close attention you're able to identify the subtle tactics and manipulation these people employ.

The stories are truly chilling and the really made me put myself into the victims's shoes and the unimaginable burden of living in constant fear. It brings the message home that there are people like this out there who simply won't let things go and the notion of that is very scary.

This documentary series certainly draws attention to the crime of aggravated stalking and the paltry sentences issued to perpetrators in these cases. It's clear that laws differ state by state, and that punishment for stalking is all over the place.

While there is an interesting format of providing both the sides of the victims and their incarcerated offenders, there was an opportunity missed in determining whether the parties viewed past events differently. Interviewers could have played a greater role in challenging the offenders' statements. There also seemed to be a great deal of missing information, as though the documentarians wanted to get by with as few interviews as possible. Where are the attorneys, judges, juries in these cases? Were there just too few individuals' perspectives to seek to make this a richer discussion?

The whole series might have been better off as a podcast, where anonymity could have been kept and B roll of houses and letters in mailboxes (the same shots used more than once) and, strangely, close-ups of people's hands could have been avoided.